There’s something that always bothered me in New Age spirituality, and that’s the expectation of having a joyride if you’re on the right path. If you’re having bad experiences of any kind, essentially if you’re not in a state of constant euphoria, you’re doing something wrong.

I don’t know who actually came up with this kind of hippy theology, but I have several issues with it.

First, it has no basis in reality. Spirituality isn’t a simple function, like what you have in a pressure cooker and the dependence of pressure within the vessel to duration of exposure of vessel to heat. Unfortunately, some people see it exactly like that: you have exposure of soul to positive forces and there’s an expectation of a gradual increase in spiritual states as a result. This completely ignores the non-linear mechanisms, such as the karmaśayas, or astral/causal larvae in a different terminology. What those things do is lose containment when you raise the energy level of the surrounding spiritual substance, and they release the low-energy content into the main soul-mass, resulting in a profoundly traumatic experience. If one is not prepared for such events and does not possess tools and skills necessary to deal with them in a constructive manner, the result of such a sudden exposure to high spiritual energies might be profoundly negative, putting one in a much worse place than the one he appears to have come from. A thermodynamic analogy would be a system in which you have accumulators of low energy, such as polar ice, and when you increase global temperature, you don’t have a linear temperature rise across the system because what happens is that polar ice breaks, falls into the ocean, is taken by sea currents to the warmer waters, where it melts quickly and lowers the temperature of the surrounding ocean and decreases its salinity, which can produce a collapse of thermohaline circulation and, as a result, a drop in global temperature. That is actually known to have happened historically and is called a Dansgaard-Oeschger event. So, if a realistic physical thermodynamic situation doesn’t match the expectation of linearity based on a super-simplified model of a pressure cooker on a stove, I don’t know why some people thought that human spirituality would. Unfortunately, most people who are into spirituality have very limited understanding of science and as a result their expectations and models of reality are quite naive.

Second, it can seriously traumatize people if their experience doesn’t match what they were led to believe is the norm of spiritual progress. If they expect linear growth of euphoria and what they get is a short period of euphoria followed by very nasty things, they might be completely unprepared and unable to deal with the unpleasant turn of events and the end result might be much worse than it could be if they were given a more realistic set of expectations.

Third, it’s a new invention that completely ignores the experiences of saints. For instance, John of the Cross actually named the unpleasant part of the spiritual path “the dark night of the soul”, and contrary to most beliefs it doesn’t mean “depression”, and it isn’t necessary just outburst of a low-energy astral larva. Sometimes, it is required for a spiritual person to go through certain experiences without assistance from above, because apparently you can’t learn how to solve certain problems if God is carrying the majority of your burden. Sometimes, such “dark nights” can span for decades, during which a saint needs to learn how to remain focused on God without God’s revealed presence, assistance or comfort, through prolonged periods of time. This doesn’t mean that the saint had spiritually fallen; in fact, his actual strength may be vastly greater than that of someone who is apparently euphoric. This can be illustrated with an example of a freight train. It can appear to be slow compared to a car, but if you account for the weight it is pulling, you get a more realistic picture of the power involved. Caitanya, too, talks in volumes about maintaining a loving relationship with God in His absence, when He is not apparent to the bhakta, and about service in separation. Rather than being a state of spiritual downfall, this seems to be part of the process of spiritual maturation, where a shallow ecstatic state gives way to a more profound, complex understanding of things that is not really possible if the shallow but pleasant emotions never have a reason to subside and reveal the underlying structure that needs reconstructive work.

Fourth, I am deeply skeptical of pleasure as a metric of spiritual progress, since that would tend to give credence to an opinion I once heard, that most spiritual seekers happen to be drug addicts that seek a drug-like experience by non-chemical means. If God is a substitute for heroin, how is that form of spirituality different from any addiction to pleasure which is satisfied by pleasure-inducing chemicals? There seems to be a test of sincerity that can explain at least a part of the “dark nights of the soul” – if one seeks God for the pleasure that accompanies the experience, he will be disillusioned by such an experience and will go and seek his pleasures elsewhere. If, however, one is here for wisdom, reality, truth and other more profound aspects of the Divine reality, he will go through the painful part of the path if not gladly, then with acceptance. As men will sometimes go to war together knowing that they will die, so will a saint follow God into the valley of death if need be. The thrill-seeking hippies will go elsewhere, which might contribute to the set of reasons due to which they don’t seem to end up with much to show for, as far as spiritual achievements go.

Spirituality is not a pleasure cruise, where you need but to sample one’s degree of bliss in order to know his progress on the path. Reality doesn’t look like a promotional leaflet of some cult, where you have a bunch of happy idiots faking bliss in order to attract converts. Rather, it seems to be an invitation to bear your cross and follow God to the place of crucifixion. Yes, God is immense pleasure. However, God is also truth and wisdom and clarity and the ability to bear immense loads and survive great evils and end up wiser and deeper than before. Learning God isn’t a path from lesser to greater bliss, it’s a path from lesser to greater existence, during which your entire personality may have to be broken and reconstructed out of better stuff, and that can hurt like bloody hell.

If someone is telling you that it isn’t supposed to hurt and that spiritual pain means you’re doing something wrong, he either doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about or is being deliberately deceptive. If you need to reconstruct a car engine in order to tune it, expectation that it will continue to go faster throughout the tuning process is sheer folly. Not only will it not go faster, it will not go at all because it will be in pieces, because it’s being worked on. It will go faster once it’s reassembled and put back into function on a higher level of capability. It is similar with yoga; during the process of spiritual reconstruction, you can look completely wrecked and in total disarray. You don’t just improve linearly, there are points of significant improvement separated by periods of reconstructive work during which you look and feel like shit. That’s just how it is, and if anyone is telling you otherwise he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

In the previous article I wrote about the differences between male and female approaches to spirituality and there are some things I’d like to add.

The most important thing is that the female approach to spirituality is what is commonly known as spirituality. That’s what everybody implicitly assumes to be spirituality – fight ego, be nice and smily and kind, meditate, please God, try to be acceptable to God, that kind of stuff. If the male approach is even mentioned, it’s mentioned as “bad guy stuff”, as something you are warned against, the dark side of the Force. Essentially, if you turn into a slavegirl you’re on the light side of the force, and if you develop balls you’re on the dark side. Apparently, God favours femininity.

Except not. You see, when I have to take account of the most impressive historical spiritual people of all times, what do we get? Buddha, male approach. Jesus, male approach. Marpa and Milarepa, male approach. Lahiri Mahasaya and Yuktesvar, male approach. Shankaracharya, male approach. Devpuriji, male approach. Ram Gopal, male approach. Most Zen masters, male approach. Vivekananda, male approach. Me, male approach. As for female approach, we have Theresa of Avilla, st. Francis, John of the Cross, Ramakrishna, and, most notably, Caitanya.

It’s not that female approach is without representation among the saints. It obviously produces results. However, considering how incredibly represented the male approach seems to be among those who are the most worthy of emulation, I think some things require reassessment.

First of all, the difference between male and female approach is not necessarily a radical one; sometimes it’s merely a matter of fine accent. For instance, female approach is to worship and admire your husband (or God), and find fulfillment in contemplation of his person alone, without self. This is then misinterpreted as ego-less state, while it’s in fact merely the female approach to samyama. The male approach is to train with a master as an apprentice, to acquire skills and to become a worthy artisan and eventually a master. You learn by accepting an admirable worthy authority over yourself and diligently practice and absorb skills which you immediately employ in practice, so that they can be honed and further refined. With progress, you develop pride in your achievement, which motivates you further.

The end-result of the female approach is to be inseparable from the object of your affection and a worthy wife, and the end-result of the male approach is to become a master of your trade.

If you ask a spiritually successful woman about her secret, she’ll tell you about all the things to do in order to be acceptable to and inseparable from God. If you ask a spiritually successful man, he’ll tell you about all the skills you need to master, all the self-control you need to have and sacrifices you need to make in order to obtain qualities that matter. A woman will describe enlightenment as sacred spiritual marriage. A man will describe it as spiritual mastery.

Ask Caitanya, he’ll tell you how to love Krishna and be inseparable from him even in separation. Ask Shankaracharya, and he’ll tell you how to attain realisation of brahman and cast aside all illusions and ignorance, understanding that you are that reality.

Ask a male-approach saint and he’ll tell you about all the things that need to be overcome and conquered, all the enemies to be defeated, all the pitfalls to be avoided, all the allies one needs to have, all the sacrifices one needs to make, and all the qualities one needs to hone. Ask a female-approach saint and she’ll tell you how you need to renounce ego in order to be acceptable in the presence of God, how to renounce everything that gets in the way of the love for God, how to persevere when not in the presence of God and remain faithful, and how you need to surrender to God who will remove all impurities from your soul and remake you into his image.

Both approaches work. It’s not that one is an inferior version of the other, or a set of spiritual flaws that need to be polished away on that other path. You just need to be aware of what they are. It’s not that the male approach is ego-driven and female approach is ego-less. That’s all bullshit, because males and females have a different ego-structure, different animal biology with different instincts and reactions. The term “ego” is woefully ill-applicable and is firmly entrenched in the 19^th century understanding of those things. To a female, being judged as attractive and acceptable is as much of an ego-boost as power and control are to a male. That female ego is passive and male is active makes no difference. It’s just that we are used to accepting a female who just got a major ego-boost as ego-less.

Satisfied female ego looks like an ego-less state, and satisfied male ego looks like an egoistic state. For instance, when a woman lies in bed with her husband after sex, she is satisfied, calm, without thoughts, without desires, at peace with herself. It looks like no ego, but it’s satisfied ego, ego that has what it wants. A satisfied male ego is also a state of accomplishment, pride of achievement, of job well done, in peace and no thoughts and desires.

Most talk about overcoming ego comes from female-approach teachers lecturing men on how to become good women, or even worse, how to make men non-threatening to women. It’s all crap, it’s worthless and only damages men spiritually and hinders their progress. I’ve seen the results of such schools; they produce happy and empowered female students and wrecked, feminized, insecure and tightly restrained male students. Also, the male-approach teachers can produce strong and empowered male students, and insecure, fractured, shriveled-up female students. That, too, is a shitty outcome, but since the teachers seldom understand how things actually work and how you need to adapt your approach to work with students’ strengths in order to overcome their weaknesses, and they rarely even know what actually worked for them, it’s not unexpected.

How do I know all this? It’s because I use both approaches when appropriate. I can start with female approach and then switch to the male approach; for instance, I use female approach when I’m insecure about something and I want to absorb all that I can, and I switch to male approach when I know what I’m doing. Similarly, if a woman uses mostly the female approach, it’s great, but she needs to be able to use the male approach when necessary, because not all problems can be solved with one way alone. Sometimes you need tools that help you endure and change, and sometimes you need to own the power. Sometimes you need to pray for the Force to be with you, and sometimes you need to factually state that it is with you, at the present moment. That isn’t a fall to the “dark side”, it’s a necessary prerequisite of success, because it’s ok to be uncertain and doubtful when you’re trying, but once you’ve succeeded, you need to claim it or you are effectively rejecting it.

Considering what I wrote about human genetic predispositions in the previous article, one might conclude that I think male approach to spirituality is inherently better than female and that women are therefore disadvantaged.

What I actually have a problem with is women teaching men their female kind of spirituality, with the end result of men not achieving anything. This female approach to spirituality became so widespread that men are seriously disadvantaged unless they see it for what it is and understand that a masculine approach s not a set of flaws that need to be corrected in order to turn them into a proper version of a human, which just accidentally happens to have ovaries. There’s no inherent problem with either female or male approach to spirituality as long as you have a correct understanding what they are, how they work, what is their realistic purpose, and what’s the realistic chance of success if you apply them with the intended goal of attaining liberation.

The male approach to spirituality is to correctly diagnose the situation, to figure out how it would best be approached, and then to improvise methods in order to achieve the goal.

The female approach to spirituality is to be likable in order to gain favor from the entity in charge, assuming the entity in charge reacts positive to cute and lovable females.

Let’s model the problem first, in two possible ways. First model is impersonal, according to Vedanta. This place is what it is, there’s no-one in charge, there’s no lock on the door, but ignorance, desires and past karma bind souls to this place and the only way out is to gain proper understanding and realization, to shed desires and cultivate detachment, and to patiently work through past karma.

The second model is the common denominator of Christianity and Buddhism. You did something that got you attached to this place. This place is the domain of its King, whom Jesus calls Satan the prince of this world, and Buddha calls him Mara, the lord of illusion and binding. The King is completely immune to empathy, he doesn’t react to any form of manipulation, and he couldn’t care less about females, cute or otherwise. What he cares about is keeping everyone bound to this place in order to achieve his goals, whatever they may be.

Let’s now see how a competent, intelligent male would approach the problem according to both possibilities.

In both cases, he would read all the literature and consult all the experts. According to the available options, he would attempt to source all possible help. He would then assess what has the greatest probability of working, and would try that first, and if it fails, he would reassess and work down the list through other options. There’s essentially no difference in his approach regardless of whether there’s a “boss” at the gates or not. If the problem is impersonal, he will attempt to attain all the spiritual qualities that will liberate him from this mess. If the problem is personal, he will also attempt to attain all the spiritual qualities that will liberate him from this mess, and he will also study possible approaches that will help against the King. If that means accepting Jesus as his savior, he’ll do that. If that means emulating Buddha’s dialogue with Mara, he’ll do that. In any case, his approach will be coherent, practical and appropriate for the circumstances. It might still fail, but you can see how it’s rational and straightforward.

Let’s now see how a woman would approach the problem.

A woman would instinctively assume that she needs to influence the person in charge and that this person would have a known emotional response to her actions. She will first try to make herself look good and acceptable. Then she’ll try to see if she did something wrong and try to fix it so that the person in charge will see that she’s trying to be a good person and she deserves credit for trying. She will either cry and act remorseful, in order to gain sympathy, or she will attempt to be loving and radiant, non-judgmental and sweet. She will read all the spiritual books, with the purpose of making an effect on the person in charge, so that he sees that she’s trying and that her heart is in the right place. She will try to adopt all the recommended modes of action and fit in the group that seems to be spiritual.

If the problem is impersonal, meaning that there’s no gatekeeper and the only thing keeping us in bondage are our personal beliefs and investments of energy, the female approach won’t achieve anything. In case there is a gatekeeper, he is completely impervious to this form of influence and manipulation and will use the energy of all those attempts to keep the person in bondage and illusion. She will be submissive to him and he will accept submission and use it to increase bondage. She will be remorseful and he will use that as admission of guilt which strengthens bondage. She will try to make herself fit into a stereotype or a group, and he will use that to increase bondage.

So in both cases, the female approach to solving the problem, which works for manipulating powerful men into sharing their status, resources and sperm with you, will completely and utterly fail. The male approach, which works for dealing with problems in the real world, which works with actual forces, actual enemies and isn’t a social networking strategy, has a much better chance of working.

However, there’s a way in which the female approach to things might work excellently, and most women who managed to attain a high spiritual status used exactly that method. What a woman has to do is to find a concrete, actual person who is either a God or a yogi, and marry that person. How do you marry a God, well it’s simple, the nuns do it all the time. You just dedicate your entire life and your entire focus to that person that embodies God to you, you contemplate, meditate, feel the sublime spiritual states and qualities of that person and completely absorb them into yourself and model your entire personality around satisfying that person. That’s the natural female instinct, and if they target it right and follow this approach with unyielding tenacity that females genetically possess and use when they want to get something of supreme value, their approach has an incredibly high chance of producing high states of consciousness in which they can receive actual Divine guidance and instructions, which they can follow and attain liberation. Of course, they are highly vulnerable to all sorts of deceptions from Satan, so it’s a a weapon that cuts both ways. However, this form of bhakti-yoga and puja is actually designed to utilize all the female instincts and genetic makeup and that’s the primary technique of yoga a woman should use. For men, such techniques are not nearly as appropriate, and things that emulate a crisis, combat and admiration of a great, noble personality full of virtues, that would work better. For men, ishta devata is someone you emulate. For women, ishta devata is someone you surrender to and who becomes your spiritual husband. It’s a gender thing – men want to do great things, and women want to fuck men who are doing great things, and to obey them diligently.

So that’s all there is to it. Both male and female approach work if you know what they are, who you are, what you want to achieve and what will be the easiest way of doing it, for you personally. But there’s no one single method that always works, just as there is no one superior gender. However, the sure way to mess things up for yourself is to try to do things in a way that is appropriate for the opposite genetic and spiritual makeup.

But let me make this clear: all of this makes sense and works only in the initial phase of spiritual work, before you attain actual spiritual guidance and before you have to actually do things. When you receive guidance and make progress on your path, the way you need to approach things is not gender-specific, it is completely and utterly identical to the male approach, because you’re dealing with real world problems and not social networking problems. If you need to practice vipassana or the inner space technique, it doesn’t mean anything whether you’re male or female, everything you need to do is identical. If you need to have a verbal duel with Sanat Kumara, it doesn’t mean absolutely anything whether you’re male or female. Both Romana and Biljana had such duels with him, and they did it in the most male way possible; Romana gave him a retort worthy of Buddha (“All sins belong to you”), and Biljana immediately remembered one of my personal idiosyncratic weapons and struck him with it, to great effect.

So yes, female stuff is all nice and cute and cuddly, but if you’re a woman and you need to kill some shit, you need a male weapon, like a sniper rifle or an RPG. You don’t want a female weapon, like high heels or a mini skirt. 🙂